I work outside of Martinez and depending on the level of stress from the past week I tend to hunker at home on the weekends to decompress as such I am not entirely sure when the sign favoring Tim Platt’s land grab initiative over the city’s parks protection measure went up on Alhambra Ave. With less than 45 days till the June 5th primary I am surprised I haven’t seen more.

Speaking of the consequences of elections, who hasn’t read, watched or heard the pleas from the Martinez Police Department regarding staffing levels and pay inequities? During the public comment period at the April 4th council meeting one speaker plainly laid partial blame for the city’s financial forecast at Mr. Platt’s feet. The comment was prompted by Mr. Platt’s leveraging of the full council chambers, people there in support of MPD, to make his pitch for his latest land-grabbing, revenue killing, initiative.

As people decide how they’re going to vote in June and again in November remember elections have consequences. Some of those consequences have cumulative impacts. The voting public (with the guidance of those like Mr. Platt) is, in part, responsible for the structural deficit Martinez faces. As the rhetoric heats up remember, it is disingenuous to ignore the many attempts the city has made to jump start our economic engine. Redevelopment, voted on and passed by the city, thwarted. Attempts to annex North Pacheco, Alhambra Valley, thwarted. Property owners and builders attempts to breathe life into our stagnate housing market, thwarted. And these are just in recent memory.

Mr. Platt as well as others will try and distract voters from owning these consequences by placing that blame on anyone other than themselves, like the latest rumor that Mr. Dunivan’s frightened mom is the reason why cops aren’t being paid more. They will try and marginalize the impacts of foolish initiatives, as Mr. Platt did in response to the criticism that his obstruction of the Pine Meadows project was merely a loss of $100,000+ in ongoing, annual, revenues.

A city’s ongoing bills are paid with ongoing revenues (property taxes, sales taxes), not one-time monies. The city of Martinez and the voting public needs to come to grips with the reality that as a built-out city we have precious few avenues to generate streams of ongoing revenue. If issues like wage parity are important to you, so too should be reasonable plans to generate the revenue necessary to pay those wages.

Yes elections do have consequences and our police force has been feeling them for a while.

Subscribe

Comments (5)

Linda, how much do they pay you to write these things? They used Mike Afford the same way. They are cowards who cannot stand up on their own and are always the ones getting government handouts one way or another.

Kristin, this will be the one and only time I will respond to your baseless accusations and innuendos.

On page 8 of LAFCO’s Agenda Item 11-07 (September 12, 2012) http://contracostalafco.org/view_agenda/09122012 this particular parcel is called out as being removed from the original 139 parcel annexation because the parcel was, as described by Mayor Schroder, bifurcated by the Urban Limit Line and Measure J (transportation) dollars would be jeopardized by including it at that time.

This wasn’t a gift of public monies it was the correction of confusing city limit lines. Confusion that was exacerbated by a call to the police where neither MPD nor the Sheriff’s Office knew which agency had jurisdiction.

I object to exposing any woman, let alone one old enough to be my mom, to that degree of uncertainty in the event of an emergency. I wouldn’t care if her name was Mrs. Jim Smith. It’s an unfortunate state of Martinez politics that because her name is Mrs. Earl Dunivan people are willing and eager to punish her for it and treat her property differently from the other 104 parcels originally annexed.

Linda, speaking of revenues, how about everyone’s downtown properties be assessed at current value–or at least a value within 15 years time. Like I said, who pays you to write these things? Is Dunivan’s mother the only person who gets protection? As with many Schroder things, equal protection under the law is constantly violated in atrocious ways.

And let us not forget the ever rented theater which the company need not raise the revenue to pay. If there were not a company in their, the FBI would consider this money laundering/racketeering. NO JOKE.

martinezgazette.com

On January 17, 2018 the Gazette website database was lost. The back-up file was corrupted. After several weeks of attempts our website host was unable to recover our lost files.

We now have to rebuild our site from scratch. The stories and photos have to be re-uploaded on to martinezgazette.com.

We apologize for this inconvenience and we appreciate your patience as we rebuild the site.

About Us

The Martinez News-Gazette, established in 1858, is one of the oldest continuously operating newspapers in the United States, and one of the first newspapers in California. The bi-weekly serves the county seat of Contra Costa in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can reach us at (925) 228-6400.